


The things we did and didn't do

by Kyra



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aftermath, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cohabitation, England (Country), F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Insomnia, Muggle Life, Oxford, Post-War, Summer, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-20
Updated: 2005-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-29 23:20:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyra/pseuds/Kyra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Futurefic: Hermione, Ron and a maybe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The things we did and didn't do

**Author's Note:**

> Annakovsky provided the prompt. The Magnetic Fields provided the title. Written in 2005.

After the war, and then the aftermath of the war, Hermione owls her parents, leaves a note for McGonagall and takes Ron home with her.

Home isn't Hogwarts anymore, even if it feels like she never properly got to say goodbye, and the idea of Ron going home to what's left of the Burrow to long silent dinners with what's left of his family is just about as untenable as the idea of going home to her own parents' house, where they will complain about the council tax and watch Jonathon Ross and not understand anything at all.

She finds a flat outside Oxford, and a research position with the department of mystical medicine. There are no wizarding universities in themselves, but the old schools remember their own when there's a need and she's a war hero after all -- at least according to The Daily Prophet, starry-eyed first-year Hogwarts students and Cornelius Fudge, whose continued survival after everything might just be the most annoying result of the the entire affair. According to The Quibbler on the other hand she may or may not have been at various points Lord Voldemort's Muggle consort, Harry Potter's secret fiancee or Stubby Boardman. But she doesn't read The Quibbler.

When Ron saw the house for the first time, he had to duck his head to get in the door, and then he just stood in the living room looking around dubiously.

"I don't know, Hermione," he'd said. "I mean, it's all Muggle things and leckytricity, innit?"

"Honestly, Ron," she said, squeezing around him, "you act like Muggles are cavemen. It's not so bad, really. It'll do you some good."

And then his bag started to slip off his shoulder and she went to catch it and their fingers fumbled against each other for a moment, until finally he set it on the floor with a thump. And the late afternoon light was coming in all slanty and they stood there and looked at each other, until she said she was going for fish and chips, and he'd best come along to see where the shop was.

 

Ron doesn't understand the concept of finite hot water, so the shower is always cold if she gets there after him, and he doesn't take the rubbish out to the alley 'til she's asked at least twice and once when she cuts herself in the kitchen and stands there staring at the blood running down her palm and across her wrist he comes over and scourgifies and heals it and makes her a cup of tea without saying anything.

It's a two mile walk into the college but she doesn't mind. She likes the chance to think, in that good way that goes along with the steady rhythm of her body, a kind of white hum. Ron says he doesn't understand why she doesn't floo, but he still takes his broom shooting up above the house late at night, so really he does.

 

On their second Sunday she sits down with him and The Guardian's jobs section and talks him through all the possibilities, explaining as she goes. She knows he could get a job -- anywhere, really, at the Ministry or in one of Oxford's wizarding shops, but he doesn't. Instead he comes home on Thursday with a job as a bouncer at a club in town and she hugs him impulsively.

"Oh Ron, that's brilliant. It's a bit like being an auror, really," she says, though the connection's tenuous, and then everything stops for a moment. Ron's acceptance letter to Auror Training had come the same day as Harry's, on the second to last day of exams in their seventh year. They'd been in the Owlery, waiting -- or, well, she'd been studying, and they were waiting, and after they tore the scrolls open, Ron whooped his way around the room and grabbed her book out of her hands and she couldn't stop smiling in spite of herself and even then Harry's smile had been tight and his face too pale.

"All right?" she says, and touches his wrist, and he's smiling a little at the edge of the table, but it hurts to look at.

 

Ron wears all black when he leaves for work, and he looks very official and very tall. She sits on the couch with her feet under her and watches him tuck his wand in his sleeve and check himself in the mirror. His eyes flick over to hers, in the reflection, and she looks down first, and when she looks up again he's grinning, and it almost reaches his eyes.

 

Summer creeps in and it's light all the time, light at eleven, at midnight, and light again by four, dawn streaking through the sky. It gets under her skin, makes her jittery, won't let her sleep. She's still awake at half two, when she walks down to the little hole in the wall of a club, and she pulls her jumper tighter around her and waits by the back door until he finally comes out and blinks at her, surprised.

"Hullo," he says, and she falls into step beside him.

"Hi," she says. "Walk with me?"

So he does, all through town, past the last groups of students stumbling home, and out the other side. The sky is very high and the light is bleeding into it like air and she feels the special kind of alert that comes with sleeplessness. Familiar feeling, war feeling, her eyes dry and aching. They don't talk about it, they don't talk about any of it, and she wonders if Ron beside her is thinking the same thing or something utterly different. In a week it will be 31 July.

They have come up onto one of the hills, with the towers and rooftops of town clumped below them. The sun is about to be a molten sliver in the east, and Ron's hands are in his pockets and if she wanted to, she could kiss him now. He's right beside her. She could.


End file.
